For the A380 in particular, Airbus has developed a network architecture on board the aircraft based on the NSS (standing for “Network Server System”). Part of the NSS is dedicated to avionic communications. Another part is dedicated in particular to the flight operations domain (this part being referred to as “NSS Flight ops” domain hereinafter).
Thus, the NSS Flight ops domain is connected to the outside world, in particular the operations centers of the airline companies. The aircraft-ground communications between the NSS Flight ops domain and the operations centers of the airline companies are managed by the OWAG system (OWAG standing for “Open World Aircraft Ground”). This type of system is described in document WO 2008/139062.
The OWAG system enables aircraft-ground communications that are transparent in relation to communicating applications of the NSS Flight ops domain and the operations centers of the airline companies.
For example, the OWAG system manages the aircraft-ground communicator, also referred to as the communication or communications, of the NSS Flight ops domain. At present, these means are, among others, Gatelink (WiFi, cellular) and Satcom SBB. This function of managing the communication is provided by an LGCM software component (LGCM standing for “Light Green Communications Manager”), which may be installed on the ANSU-AFMR server of the NSS Flight ops domain.
The OWAG system may furthermore provide an asynchronous service that is robust, centralized and secure for the exchange of data between the aircraft (NSS Flight ops domain) and the ground (operations center of the airline company) This function is provided by an OAMS software component (OAMS standing for “On-board Asynchronous Messaging Server”) which may be installed on the ANSU-AFMR server. Furthermore, the OAMS has a counterpart on the ground at the location of operations center of the airline company, called GAMS (standing for “Ground Asynchronous Messaging Server”). The aircraft-ground data communications are thus made between the OAMS and the GAMS in the uplink direction (ground to aircraft) and equally in the downlink direction (aircraft to ground).
The OWAG system may thus provide an interface for the communication applications or those requiring communications to be implemented. These “communicating” applications may be on the aircraft or on the ground. They may use a set of primitive functions to interface with the OWAG system such as “submit data to send”, “fetch received data”, etc. The set of primitive functions given to the applications to interface with the OWAG is called OAMS API on the aircraft and GAMS API on the ground. The OAMS API is installed on the aircraft on the ANSU-AFMR server but also on the class 3 EFBs (EFB standing for “Electronic Flight Bag”) which the pilots have in the cockpit and on which the communicating applications are used.
The OWAG system in particular manages the losses and re-establishments of the aircraft-ground communications, and the interruptions and resumptions on information transformation error. Thus, the OWAG enables the complexity of the “aircraft-ground communications” issue to be concealed from the OWAG client applications.